We may earn a commission from links on this page.
The screenless strap known as the Fitbit Air is probably the best fitness tracker out there for most people, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to improve. There are ways to wear it more comfortably (on nearly any body part!) and ways to work around some of the less enjoyable features of the app. Read on for some hacks that will make your Fitbit Air experience even better.
Get a proper workout display on the Fitbit Air by broadcasting heart rate to Strava
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
While the Fitbit Air will auto-detect workouts, the only way to get data on your heart rate or time during the workout is to start a workout on your phone. Unfortunately, the Google Health app doesn’t give you much information on the workout screen—just the total time, your heart rate, and, if you’re running outside, the distance you’ve covered. On the iPhone, you won’t even get a live activity on your lock screen to remind you that the workout is still going, just a notification that says something like “run” that you can easily lose track of.
But there’s a really nice way to change all that. The Strava app has a ton of great features for live workouts. And by broadcasting your heart rate data from the Fitbit Air to the Strava app, you can get the best of both worlds. Here’s how to set it up:
-
In the Google Health app, tap on your device in the upper left corner. Tap on the Fitbit Air and then on Share Heart Rate. I set mine to Always Visible to be sure it was broadcasting, but it should still work without that toggle.
-
In the Strava app, hit Record to get to the workout recording screen, and then swipe up to see options.
-
Tap Add a sensor and choose the Fitbit Air.
-
Start the workout in the Strava app, and you’ll see your heart rate in your stats!
Using the Strava app instead of the Google Health app gives you a map of where you’re going (and you can load routes from your Strava library). It shows your lap pace and distance in addition to your total pace and distance, and in Run activities, you can tap a button on your phone to mark laps.
Put your Fitbit Air on your watch band
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
This is the Internet’s favorite Fitbit Air hack, but to be honest, it has so many caveats that it may not be a good hack for everybody. But here’s the idea: The Fitbit Air’s standard band is an 18 millimeter nylon band, so you can slip it under the pins of just about any watch. This lets you use the Fitbit Air, strap and all, in place of the watch band on your favorite mechanical watch.
This works best with the Obsidian (black) band, a mechanical watch with 18-millimeter lugs, and a person with a large wrist. If your watch takes a larger strap than 18 millimeters, you’ll find there are gaps between the strap and the watch. And if you have a small wrist, you may find you don’t have quite enough space for the watch, the Fitbit Air sensor, and the velcro closure all on the same strap. I also can’t guarantee that you’ll get the most accurate readings from this setup, since it puts the Fitbit on the bottom of your wrist where it doesn’t make great contact with your skin.
That said, it’s a good hack if your watch and your wrist allow the space, and you like the look and aren’t picky about accuracy. I wrote more about this hack here, but here’s the basic idea:
-
Remove the band from your mechanical watch.
-
Lay the Fitbit Air’s nylon band across the back of the watch, making sure that the outside of the band is facing the watch back.
-
Insert the watch band’s pins into the watch to hold the Fitbit band in place.
-
Now you have the Fitbit and the watch on the same band! Put this contraption on your wrist, and slide the watch around until everything is in a good position.
Turn off the Fitbit Air’s overbearing AI coach
The heart of the Google Health app is the AI-based Google Health Coach. It greets you every morning with a few paragraphs of text on how you slept and how it thinks your day should shape up. It checks in throughout the day to let you know how you’re meeting your goals or what it thinks of your recent workout. And sometimes—OK, often—I get sick of this and want to strangle it. I know I’m not alone, because forums where people discuss the Fitbit Air are full of complaints about the Coach making errors or just saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Fortunately, you can turn off the coach without waiting for your Premium subscription to expire. Here’s how:
-
Tap your profile picture in the upper right corner.
-
Tap Your Data in Google Health.
-
Tap Manage Feature Privacy Controls.
-
Tap Google Health Coach, and turn it off.
There. Now the app will be blissfully quiet. If you decide to turn it back on again, don’t bother with the settings above—the Google Health Coach won’t appear there when it’s disabled. Instead, just tap the “ask coach” button in the bottom right corner of the app. That’s the only place I’ve found where you can turn the coach back on.
Do this to get more accurate step counts on the Fitbit Air
The Fitbit Air counts your steps by detecting the movement of your wrist (assuming you’re wearing it on your wrist, as usual). If you’re walking, your arms will move too. It’s a fair enough assumption. But this means that hand movements can sometimes register as steps, even if you’re sitting still.
To avoid this overcounting, consider wearing it on your non-dominant hand (so, wear it on your left hand if you’re right-handed). If it’s still overcounting, go into your device settings, tap Device preferences, and then set Wrist preference to Dominant even if you’re wearing it on your non-dominant hand. That will nudge it into undercounting.
Add exercises to strength workouts on your Fitbit Air after the fact
The Fitbit Air can track strength training sessions, but you need to tell it what exercises you’re doing. There’s an easy way to make this quick, though. During your workout, just start a strength training session and don’t worry about exercises. End and save the workout.
Then go to the Coach, and upload a picture that shows your workout. If you took a workout class that posted the workout on a whiteboard, snap a picture of the whiteboard. If you used an app like Hevy, take a screenshot of your workout from that app. If you use a paper notebook like I do, snap a picture of that instead.
The Coach will detect the exercises, sets, and reps from that photo. You can also describe the workout in your own words, if you remember it. However you added that information, the Coach will attach the exercises, sets, and reps to your workout. So far, I’ve found it’s pretty reliable about recording that information correctly.
Dye the band of your Fitbit Air to a better color
The Fitbit Air’s bands only come in a few colors, and they’re a little weird. “Lavender” is a bright blue, for example, and the blue-gray color known as “Fog” seems to be sold out at the moment. If you end up with a color you don’t love, a Redditor has helpfully noted that Rit DyeMore Synthetic dyes the band perfectly. Overdyeing isn’t always predictable, since you’ll get a mix of the original color and the dye color, but it’s worth a try if you’re up for a gamble.
Nuke your Fitbit Air’s dashboard to build it properly
At the top of your home screen in the Fitbit app, you’ll see a few tiles and a circular progress graph for your steps or cardio load. There’s a ton of information that this area of the screen can display, but it’s not easy to edit. You can add tiles, and they’ll overflow to a second screen, but there’s no way to rearrange the tiles that are already there unless you carefully remove them and re-add them in a different order.
But there’s an easier way: Just delete everything. There aren’t that many tiles, and you’ll have an easier time if you just nuke them all. Hit the minus button on each tile (making sure you got the stuff on the overflow screens, too) and then re-add the things you want, in order. You don’t need to have the big circle graphs if you don’t want—or you can have two of them if you prefer.
Stick the Fitbit Air on your arm for a week
While we’re waiting for a proper bicep band, people have been coming up with creative solutions that make it so they don’t have to wear the Fitbit Air on their wrist. There are 3D-printed adapters that let you use a Whoop strap and impromptu solutions that involve velcro straps or spare bands to use as an extender.
But the simplest tip of all is to simply stick the sensor to your skin with a long-lasting adhesive. KT tape—the same stuff people use for achy joints—does the trick fairly well. You can also get the same kind of overpatch that people use for continuous glucose monitors. These are designed to stay on for a week or more, so find a good spot, then set it and forget it.
Pair both a Pixel watch and a Fitbit to swap between them
The Google Health app, sadly, cannot support using two Fitbits at once. But it can connect to one Fitbit and one Pixel Watch. If you have an old Pixel Watch you don’t use anymore, consider resurrecting it for workouts. This way, you can get your heart rate and pace data on your wrist where you can see it, then switch back to the Fitbit Air for the rest of the day and for sleep. The Google Health app will combine the metrics seamlessly.
Wear the Fitbit Air higher on your wrist for better accuracy
Good fit is important for any fitness tracker, but for the Fitbit Air, you may find that the proper placement is more important than for other fitness watches. That’s because a larger sensor does a better job of blocking out ambient light. But with as small a sensor as the Fitbit Air has, even a slight unevenness in the fit can mean that light gets in and messes with the optical sensor’s readings.
The solution is simple: Instead of wearing the band at the place where your wrist hinges, or even right above your wrist bone, move it up toward your elbow by an inch or two. Then secure the strap so you get a nice snug fit. Your workout heart rate will be much more accurate, and then you can loosen it for a more comfortable fit when your workout is over.
